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purplepierogi's review
3.0
this book married interesting things together -- family, friendship, and class in the aftermath of the USSR's collapse, gender dysphoria / exploration, all narrated from the perspective of an innocent child in the middle of very heavy life circumstances. I have to say I appreciate the writing and the development of the setting, a rich inner-life for the protagonist, but this probably falls too squarely in the queer suffering category for me. Everyone is looking for something different in a novel, and others may love it, because there's certainly hope here, too, but it was a difficult one for me.
TW: child sexual abuse
TW: child sexual abuse
deven_c's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Content Warnings
Minor: Alcoholism, Homophobia, Sexual assault, and Transphobia
ehaigh's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
mariquita181's review
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, and Child abuse
candacesiegle_greedyreader's review
5.0
There’s a Russian children’s poem about animals rebelling against their usual behavior:
“Little foxes took up matches,
And set the azure sea ablaze.”
This explains the novel’s unusual title as well as the kinds of changes going on in young Mitya’s life.
Born in the last years of the USSR, an only child squeezed into a tiny apartment with his parents and grandmother, Mitya is left alone a lot. This is where he discovers the joy of making up his face and dressing like his favorite TV characters. Russian folk stories weave their way throughout, and as Mitya gets a little older, so do stories of the New Russia. His only friend is a street drunk who takes care of ravens with elegant old-world names. Mitya feels comfortable enough with him to appear dressed as Devchonka, which his homeless friend takes with rather graceful stride. When the homeless man vanishes, Mitya enters a new world as he tries to find out what happened.
And he wants to be away from home as much as he can be since his Chechen War veteran cousin has moved in and now shares a bed with him. Mitya is raped and knows it is only the first time.
The new world he finds includes teenagers, thugs, music, people who get him, and people who don’t. He finds people respond more warmly to ethereal Devchonka than pale and weedy Mitya, makes friends, hears new rock.
Katya Kazbek’s writing style is sly and humorous with flinty points of pain. Her use of Russian folk tales is crafty, clever, and moving, illuminating Mitya and Russia’s post-Soviet journey. Katya’s writing is a delight, and “Little Foxes” is, too.
Thanks to Tin House and Edelweiss for access to this marvellous title!
“Little foxes took up matches,
And set the azure sea ablaze.”
This explains the novel’s unusual title as well as the kinds of changes going on in young Mitya’s life.
Born in the last years of the USSR, an only child squeezed into a tiny apartment with his parents and grandmother, Mitya is left alone a lot. This is where he discovers the joy of making up his face and dressing like his favorite TV characters. Russian folk stories weave their way throughout, and as Mitya gets a little older, so do stories of the New Russia. His only friend is a street drunk who takes care of ravens with elegant old-world names. Mitya feels comfortable enough with him to appear dressed as Devchonka, which his homeless friend takes with rather graceful stride. When the homeless man vanishes, Mitya enters a new world as he tries to find out what happened.
And he wants to be away from home as much as he can be since his Chechen War veteran cousin has moved in and now shares a bed with him. Mitya is raped and knows it is only the first time.
The new world he finds includes teenagers, thugs, music, people who get him, and people who don’t. He finds people respond more warmly to ethereal Devchonka than pale and weedy Mitya, makes friends, hears new rock.
Katya Kazbek’s writing style is sly and humorous with flinty points of pain. Her use of Russian folk tales is crafty, clever, and moving, illuminating Mitya and Russia’s post-Soviet journey. Katya’s writing is a delight, and “Little Foxes” is, too.
Thanks to Tin House and Edelweiss for access to this marvellous title!
emilygoodpeasant's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Child abuse, Transphobia, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault
matthewkeating's review
4.0
Translator Katya Kazbek’s debut novel is rife with fantasy. In a literal sense, this comes from the retold fairy tale interwoven throughout. More impressively, the atmosphere Kazbek creates in her rendering of emotionally desolate post-USSR Moscow manages often to capture and maintain that feeling.
When Mitya is two years old, his grandmother loses a needle while sewing and his family assumes he must have swallowed it. This leads Mitya to draw parallels to the story of Koschei the Deathless (Koschei is a villainous character, and Mitya’s self-identification with him is revealing). Koschei’s soul is hidden inside of a needle, which is hidden in an increasingly bizarre array of nesting objects chained up and buried on the island. Koschei can’t be killed unless the needle is broken, similar in concept to the heel of Achilles (far superior to Achilles's setup, Kazbek notes in the novel’s opening). Mitya secretly believes the needle he must have swallowed has made him special, and maybe even invincible.
Life, however, is not so easy as one might expect it to be for someone in possession of an immortality needle. Mitya discovers at a very young age that he doesn’t know how he fits into a world categorized by binary gender. He likes to dress up as a girl, but he isn’t sure what this means—does he want to be a girl? Does he only want to be a girl sometimes? What’s the difference between boys and girls, and are those the only options, anyway?
The queer story Kazbek tells is a beautiful one, equal parts confusion and exploration, but peppered with gemlike moments of realization as well. The most striking aspect of Mitya’s journey towards self-discovery is its unhurriedness and its lack of concern with labels. Mitya is more concerned about figuring out what it is that makes him feel at home with himself than he is any sort of rigid categorization. At the same time, I appreciate the prescience of these thoughts to Mitya. Although Kazbek is unhurried in her treatment of this aspect of the story, these questions of his identity matter deeply to Mitya, as they often do when one first starts asking them.
Parallel chapters (denoted with spelled-out numbers, e.g. “one,” “two,” as opposed to the main chapters in numerals) offer what is at times a necessary reprieve from the bleakness of Mitya’s day-to-day existence. These are implied to take place in Mitya’s dreams, and tell a strange, fantastical story about Koschei, the aforementioned immortal villain. In this re-telling, Koschei is the heir to an all-male dynasty of Koschei villains, and doesn’t feel very villainous, or very manly. The imagery used throughout is sufficiently bizarre and magical in the odd and sometimes even grotesque way that old folk- and fairy-tales (as well as dreams) so often are. They are not the heart of the novel but serve to illuminate it, and drawing connections between the two stories is interesting and fruitful.
Mitya is at his strongest when he is at his most childlike, I think, which seems to fit with a line at the end of the first chapter, where Kazbek notes that often it is children who see reality most clearly.
For all of Mitya’s strengths as a character, there are times when suspension of disbelief becomes difficult, when Mitya seems a little too wise and conscious for an eleven-or-twelve year old boy (even younger, in the opening chapters).
I am well aware that abuse, poverty, and the challenges of an awful childhood will cause someone to mature—in some sense—very quickly. Lest it seem that I contradict the point I just made: Mitya’s childlike views and his struggle to understand the world are sources of wonder and beauty, and yes, of a certain kind of wisdom. That being said, there are select moments where Mitya’s social sensitivity—which I would argue is not an aspect of that childish proclivity for the truth—seems to go far beyond his years. Mitya acts as though despite his general lack of understanding of the world at large, he somehow has the astute social awareness of someone far older and more experienced than he is, especially given his social isolation. These moments are small, however, and others may not find them terribly disruptive.
Kazbek’s characters are her strength: take Mitya’s grandmother, Alyssa Vitalyevna, a very funny character whose every word seems completely inevitable because she has been created so truthfully. Marina is another particularly shining example, a young Ukrainian woman suffering as she tries to make ends meet after fleeing home.
It’s astonishing the way that some characters, who appear so very little, can live on so vividly for the duration of the book—this is a recurring theme. Examples include a handsome and kind homeless boy or the child-turned-lead-singer of a popular underground band. Small intersections with people follow Mitya like ghosts, both friendly and malevolent.
The book centers primarily on Mitya and his thoughts but occasionally glimpses are offered into the lives of others. This sifting through the thoughts of the supporting cast sets the stage with texture, depth, and tenderness. It allows us to sympathize, on some level, with everyone, and serves to make the world Mitya lives in feel real, almost tangible.
There is deep humanity in the equality with which these thoughts are exposed. Early on in the book Mitya suffers abuse from his older cousin, Vovka, who has come back from the war with one less arm, horrifically traumatized by the battlefield. We are treated to a grueling description of the act, one of the first truly harrowing passages in the novel (of several to come).
The narration, though, has no qualms about letting the reader inside Vovka's head, notably in a later passage, where he realizes to his own horror the things he has just done, and lies awake in terror, thinking on the war and how now he is not only the tortured but the torturer.
This is not a story interested in binary distinctions of good and evil, even when it would allow the reader to sleep more soundly. Little Foxes Took Up Matches is a compelling and rewarding queer coming-of-age tale with its excellent dreamlike atmosphere, though it is not for the faint of heart.
When Mitya is two years old, his grandmother loses a needle while sewing and his family assumes he must have swallowed it. This leads Mitya to draw parallels to the story of Koschei the Deathless (Koschei is a villainous character, and Mitya’s self-identification with him is revealing). Koschei’s soul is hidden inside of a needle, which is hidden in an increasingly bizarre array of nesting objects chained up and buried on the island. Koschei can’t be killed unless the needle is broken, similar in concept to the heel of Achilles (far superior to Achilles's setup, Kazbek notes in the novel’s opening). Mitya secretly believes the needle he must have swallowed has made him special, and maybe even invincible.
Life, however, is not so easy as one might expect it to be for someone in possession of an immortality needle. Mitya discovers at a very young age that he doesn’t know how he fits into a world categorized by binary gender. He likes to dress up as a girl, but he isn’t sure what this means—does he want to be a girl? Does he only want to be a girl sometimes? What’s the difference between boys and girls, and are those the only options, anyway?
The queer story Kazbek tells is a beautiful one, equal parts confusion and exploration, but peppered with gemlike moments of realization as well. The most striking aspect of Mitya’s journey towards self-discovery is its unhurriedness and its lack of concern with labels. Mitya is more concerned about figuring out what it is that makes him feel at home with himself than he is any sort of rigid categorization. At the same time, I appreciate the prescience of these thoughts to Mitya. Although Kazbek is unhurried in her treatment of this aspect of the story, these questions of his identity matter deeply to Mitya, as they often do when one first starts asking them.
Parallel chapters (denoted with spelled-out numbers, e.g. “one,” “two,” as opposed to the main chapters in numerals) offer what is at times a necessary reprieve from the bleakness of Mitya’s day-to-day existence. These are implied to take place in Mitya’s dreams, and tell a strange, fantastical story about Koschei, the aforementioned immortal villain. In this re-telling, Koschei is the heir to an all-male dynasty of Koschei villains, and doesn’t feel very villainous, or very manly. The imagery used throughout is sufficiently bizarre and magical in the odd and sometimes even grotesque way that old folk- and fairy-tales (as well as dreams) so often are. They are not the heart of the novel but serve to illuminate it, and drawing connections between the two stories is interesting and fruitful.
Mitya is at his strongest when he is at his most childlike, I think, which seems to fit with a line at the end of the first chapter, where Kazbek notes that often it is children who see reality most clearly.
For all of Mitya’s strengths as a character, there are times when suspension of disbelief becomes difficult, when Mitya seems a little too wise and conscious for an eleven-or-twelve year old boy (even younger, in the opening chapters).
I am well aware that abuse, poverty, and the challenges of an awful childhood will cause someone to mature—in some sense—very quickly. Lest it seem that I contradict the point I just made: Mitya’s childlike views and his struggle to understand the world are sources of wonder and beauty, and yes, of a certain kind of wisdom. That being said, there are select moments where Mitya’s social sensitivity—which I would argue is not an aspect of that childish proclivity for the truth—seems to go far beyond his years. Mitya acts as though despite his general lack of understanding of the world at large, he somehow has the astute social awareness of someone far older and more experienced than he is, especially given his social isolation. These moments are small, however, and others may not find them terribly disruptive.
Kazbek’s characters are her strength: take Mitya’s grandmother, Alyssa Vitalyevna, a very funny character whose every word seems completely inevitable because she has been created so truthfully. Marina is another particularly shining example, a young Ukrainian woman suffering as she tries to make ends meet after fleeing home.
It’s astonishing the way that some characters, who appear so very little, can live on so vividly for the duration of the book—this is a recurring theme. Examples include a handsome and kind homeless boy or the child-turned-lead-singer of a popular underground band. Small intersections with people follow Mitya like ghosts, both friendly and malevolent.
The book centers primarily on Mitya and his thoughts but occasionally glimpses are offered into the lives of others. This sifting through the thoughts of the supporting cast sets the stage with texture, depth, and tenderness. It allows us to sympathize, on some level, with everyone, and serves to make the world Mitya lives in feel real, almost tangible.
There is deep humanity in the equality with which these thoughts are exposed. Early on in the book Mitya suffers abuse from his older cousin, Vovka, who has come back from the war with one less arm, horrifically traumatized by the battlefield. We are treated to a grueling description of the act, one of the first truly harrowing passages in the novel (of several to come).
The narration, though, has no qualms about letting the reader inside Vovka's head, notably in a later passage, where he realizes to his own horror the things he has just done, and lies awake in terror, thinking on the war and how now he is not only the tortured but the torturer.
This is not a story interested in binary distinctions of good and evil, even when it would allow the reader to sleep more soundly. Little Foxes Took Up Matches is a compelling and rewarding queer coming-of-age tale with its excellent dreamlike atmosphere, though it is not for the faint of heart.
bestknownfor's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
timmeh's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Homophobia, Alcohol, Rape, Incest, and Pedophilia
double_spell's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75